The profit was significantly below market expectation however its radical reduction in Southern Euro members sovereign debt cheered the market and the bank stock was up 6.2% in early afternoon trading on the day of the announcement. The writedown totalled €2.4bn. BNP Paribas, which had the largest exposure to the troubled southern Eurozone sovereign debt of the major banks has cut its exposure to Greek sovereign debt by 60%, to Italy by 40% and to Spain by 81.5%. In total the reduction in sovereign debt holdings to the three countries was around €12.75bn. The full reports and accounts was not available at the time of writing. The above writedowns and sales should leave the bank with approximately €1.5bn of Greek sovereign debt after write down. Not written down, it is estimated now to be holding around €0.5bn of Spanish and €12.45bn of Italian sovereign debt. The high Italian exposure comes from its acquisition of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro five years ago.

Investment and CIB banking profit were both down by nearly one half. This had been expected and received little attention by the market. Equally the strong improvement in retail arising from increased income and lower expenses was largely ignored also.